The Government Leader's Field Guide to Organizational Agility, livre ebook

This is the first book to fully adapt the principles of agility for government leaders who want to make their organizations more effective and nimble while better serving their public mission.
This is the first book to fully adapt the principles of agility for government leaders who want to make their organizations more effective and nimble while better serving their public mission.

This practical resource will equip government leaders at all levels with evidence-based, hands-on guidance for transforming their organizations, enabling them to better serve the public and their customers. While many books focus on organizational agility for leaders of for-profit companies, this is the first one tailored to the unique requirements government leaders face. They must find a way to accomplish their mission while navigating constant change.
Government leaders at all levels must maneuver their organizations through new, often complex challenges, ranging from new laws that impact their agencies, new technologies, changes in leadership, and unexpected events. By explaining how to manage and organize work differently, this guide will help leaders weather the storm of that constant change so they can help their agencies realize their missions and serve the public interest.

Contents
Preface
Chapter 1: Constant Change Requires a Different Way of Organizing 13
Make Sensing and Interpreting Routine Behaviors 20
Tool: Identify Factors that Influence Your Organization 21
Tool: Analyze Your Environment 25
Make Responding a Routine Behavior 26
Understand the Seven Levers 29
Myth: We Just Need To Be More Effective 31
Myth: We Need Either Stability or Flexibility, Not Both 32

Chapter 2: Build a Foundation of Psychological Safety 36
Understand Why We Need to Feel Safe 39
Tool: Is There Enough Psychological Safety? 41
Use the Platinum Rule 44
Give Yourself and Your Team Permission To Be Curious 46
Reward Behaviors, not Just Results 48
Myth: Telling People to Feel Safe Will Enhance Their Psychological Safety 52
Tool: Actions to Increase Psychological Safety 53

Chapter 3: Lead with Agility 58
Explicitly Call for Agility Norms 62
Help Others Understand the Mission 64
Empower Others 65
Lend Support to—and Participate in—the Routines 66
Tool: Support Behavior Change in Others 67
Tool: Agile Leadership Behaviors Self-Assessment 68
Myth: As a Leader, I Have to Have All of the Answers 73
Myth: If I Delegate, Then There Won't be a Role for Me 75

Chapter 4: Make Decisions at the Right Level 78
Enable Decisions at the Lowest Level Possible 79
Tool: Who Should Make a Decision? 80
Make an Informed Decision 82
Widely Share Decisions 83
Tool: Decision Log 85
Don't Debate, Test it Out 86
Flatten the Structure and Respond with Teams 87
Myth: As a Leader, I Won't Know What's Going on if I Delegate Decisions 88

Chapter 5: Promote Collaborative Learning 92
Set Norms for Information Sharing and Interpreting 96
Tool: What are Your Organization's Information Sharing Norms? 102
Turn Meetings into Meaningful Discussions 103
Create Knowledge Networks 107
Tool: Map Your Knowledge Network 111
Curate Knowledge 112
Myth: Technology will Solve our Knowledge Problems 114
Myth: I Won't Have Any Job Security If I Start Sharing Information 115

Chapter 6: Create Stability 120
Maintain a Stable Organizational Structure 121
Tool: When To Restructure the Entire Organization 125
Identify Well-defined Processes 126
Tool: Where Do You Need Stable Processes? 130
Tool: Process Improvement Canvas 132
Staff Stable Processes with Stable Roles 132
Provide Stable Norms and Expectations 134
Myth: We Can Respond to Frequent Changes by Restructuring 136

Chapter 7 – Create Flexibility 139
Respond with Teams 140
Incorporate Innovation Techniques to Solve Problems 142
Conduct Rapid Experiments and Pilots 144
Tool: Map Your Assumptions 146
Identify Flexible Processes 148
Staff Flexible Processes with Flexible Roles 149
Myth: We Have To Be a Well-functioning Organization Before We Can Be Flexible 151
Myth: Developing Innovative Ideas is a Mysterious Process 152

Chapter 8 – Encourage the Routines 158
Get Everyone Involved in the Routines 159
Tool: Where Can We be More Proactive? 159
Tool: Coordinate and Define Your Sensing Activities 162
Tool: Sensing and Interpreting Checklists 164
Engage in Reactive and Proactive Sensing 169
Build in Time for Interpretation 170
Engage in Reactive and Proactive Responding 170
Myth: Proactive Actions Might Not Pay Off 172
Myth: Experimenting and Piloting Might Not Pay Off 174

Chapter 9: Invest in People 179
Invest in Continual Employee Development 180
Promote a Learning Orientation 184
Tool: Document (and Celebrate) Learning 187
Proactively Identify Future Skills 187
Provide Time for Employees to Recharge and Refresh 189
Myth: We Don't Have the Time or Money to Develop Employees 191

Chapter 10 – Putting It All Together 195
Be Persistent and Consistent 196
Cycle Back Through the Chapters 197
Expand Your Application 197

Appendix: Organizational Agility Framework 200
The Environment 201
The Organization: Agility Routines and Levers 202
Outcomes 207
The Government Organizational Agility Assessment 208
Author and Contributor Bios 211
References 214